Off the Page

You know how there are people who talk about reading cookbooks in bed, just for the pleasure of the reading? Susan Musgrave's A Taste of Haida Gwaii is precisely the kind of cookbook they're talking about. For example, the chief appeal of the following recipe for Dulce de Leche Buttermilk Ice Cream is not actually the inevitable delicious, but lines like, "When things end up burnt in my kitchen there isn’t usually a happy ending. My burnt messes never end up starring in a Winning Desserts of the World cookbook. They go over the cliff onto the riverbank where the ravens and eagles do daily fly-by’s hoping for a fiasco in my kitchen."

Amazing. 

But yes, enjoy the ice cream too. Technically (by which we mean seasonally, and not by the school calendar) there still remain weeks and weeks of summer. 

*****

I have combined Smitten Kitchen’s Buttermilk Ice Cream and Dulce de Leche Ice Cream recipes to come up with a recipe that is the best of both worlds.

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 cup (250 mL) heavy cream

3/4 cup (190 mL) dulce de leche (purchased, or homemade, see Aside)

6 large egg yolks

1 cup (250 mL) buttermilk

1 tbsp (15 mL) vanilla or one whole vanilla bean, scraped and simmered with the cream

Pinch of salt

Sprinkling of edible gold flake …